Xantcha planned her reply as she set aside a mug of cold tea. "And if he isn't?" She'd learned from Urza, truth and logic were worthless with madmen. It was always better to let them rant until they ran themselves down.
"Then they'll kill me, and you'll have to tell Urza what happe-nen, and maybe then he'll do something."
She grimaced into her tea. "That's a burden I don't want to carry. So, let's assume you survive. Let's assume you're face-to-face with Tabarna. What truth will you tell your king?"
"I will tell him that Efuands must stop killing Efuands. I'll tell Tabarna what the Red-Stripes have done."
"Very bold, but with or without Phyrexians, your king already knows what the Red-Stripes are doing in the Shratta's name."
"He can't..." Ratepe's voice trailed off. He'd seen too much in his short life to dismiss her out of hand.
"He must."
"Not Tabarna. He wouldn't. If he's still in Pincar City, if he's still a man, then he thinks what I thought, that it's all the Shratta. He doesn't know the truth. He can't."
Xantcha sipped her tea. "All right, Rat, assume you're right. The king of Efuan Pincar, a man like yourself, still sits on his throne. He doesn't know that there are Phyrexians among his Red-Stripe guards. He doesn't know what those red-striped thugs have done. He doesn't know that, in all likelihood, the Shratta were the first to be exterminated. If Tabarna doesn't know any of this exists, then who else in Efuan Pincar does? And how has this nameless, faceless person kept your king in ignorance all these years?"
Ratepe's whole face tightened in uncomfortable silence. "No." not a denial, but a prayer, "Not Tabarna."
"Best hope that Tabarna is skin stretched over metal. You'll hurt less, when the time comes, if you're not fighting a man who sold his soul to Phyrexia. In the meantime, until I know where the Phyrexians are and who they are, we will rely on Urza's pebbles and you will stay out of trouble and danger."
Ratepe wasn't happy. He wasn't stupid, either. After a slight nod, he busied himself folding his blanket.
That day's journey was easier and much quieter. Ratepe spent most of their time aloft staring at the horizon, but there were no tears and Xantcha let him be. Most of her journeys had been taken in silence, and though she'd quickly grown accustomed to Ratepe's company and conversation, old habits returned quickly.
She brought them over the Pincar City walls in the darkness between moon set and sunrise six days later. The sky was clear, the streets were deserted, and the guards they could see were more interested in staying awake until the end of their watch than in a dark speck moving across a dark sky. Xantcha decided to risk a pass above the palace. Few things were as useful as a bird's eye view of unfamiliar territory.
A few slow-moving servants were at work in the courtyards, getting a jump on their chores before the sun rose. Sea breezes and frequent showers kept the coastal city livable in the summer, but the air was always moist and if a person had the choice, work was easier done before dawn than in mid-afternoon.
Xantcha was building a mind-map of the royal apartments, servant quarters, and bureaucratic halls when Ratepe tugged on her sleeve and drew her attention to the stables. His lips touched her hair as he whispered.
"Trouble."
Six men, cloaked head to toe but otherwise unmarked, led their horses toward the postern gate-the palace's private gate. Probably it wasn't anything significant. Palaces throughout the multiverse had similarly placed gates because royal affairs sometimes required the sort of discretion that others might call deceit. But while it was still dark they were in no danger of being seen. Xantcha wove her fingers, and the sphere floated behind the men.
The tide was out, exposing a narrow rocky spit between the ocean and the harbor. The not-unpleasant tang of seaweed and salt-water mud permeated the sphere. Xantcha took a deep breath. No glistening oil. Whoever the six cloaked men were, they weren't Phyrexian.
"Messengers," she decided softly and the sphere began to drift backward with the sea breeze.
"Follow them."
"They're nothing, Rat."
"They're trouble. I smell it."
He knew she detected Phyrexians by scent. She knew his nose wasn't sensitive. "You can't smell trouble, and you can't see it, either. We've got to find an alley where we can set ourselves down without drawing a crowd."
"Xantcha, please? I've just got a feeling about them. I want to know where they're going. I'll stay at the inn. I won't give you any hassle, just-follow them?"
"No complaints when we're stuck hiding in a gully somewhere until after sundown?"
"Not a word."
"Not a sound or a gesture, either," she grumbled, but she shifted her hand and they scooted over the palace wall.
Their quarry stayed along the shoreline, out of side of the guards on the Pincar walls. Ratepe was likely right. They weren't up to any good, but that could mean almost anything, maybe even a meeting with the Shratta. That would be worth knowing about, but she wasn't prepared for confrontation.
"We're not getting involved," Xantcha warned. They'd fallen far enough behind the six men that Xantcha wasn't worried about being overheard. She did worry about sun. Dominaria wasn't a world where large man-made objects routinely whizzed through the sky. Urza's ornithopters, like Urza himself, were remembered mostly for their wrongheadedness. She'd followed men for days and never been noticed, but men who were, as Ratepe proclaimed, trouble, tended to looked over their shoulder frequently and might notice a shadow where one shouldn't be.
"Not unless we have to." "No unlesses, Rat. We're not getting involved." "We've got more than we had when you sent me into a burning village."
True enough. Since she knew there were Phyrexians loose in Efuan Pincar, Xantcha had fattened their arsenal with a variety of exploding artifacts and a pair of firepots. Having protection wasn't the same as using it. She hadn't survived all these centuries by blundering into someone else's trouble.
"We're following them, that's all. In the very unlikely event that they're going to meet with a Phyrexian demon, I'll think about it." She thought about it as long as it took her to spin the sphere around and push it, with all of
her might, toward the opposite horizon.
Although Xantcha and Ratepe could still see the city walls, the riders had reached a point where they were beyond the Pincar guards' sight. Accordingly, they mounted and galloped their horses south.
"They're in a hurry," Ratepe said as Xantcha pushed the loaded sphere to its limit. "I wonder where they're going."
"Not far. Not at that speed."
The laden sphere couldn't keep pace. They lost sight of the riders, but not the dust cloud their horses raised. Xantcha took the opportunity to tack behind them and be in the east with the sun when they caught up again.
"You said you'd follow them!" Ratepe said, as the sphere veered sunward.
"You said no complaints."
"If we were on their tails."
"We're on their sun-side flank, it's safer. Trust me."
As expected, the horses slowed, the dust ebbed, and the sphere carried Xantcha and Ratepe close enough to see that the men had reined in at the grassy edge of an abandoned orchard and dismounted.
"That's odd," Xantcha muttered. A warrior's sunrise ceremony? She'd seen far stranger traditions.
Ratepe had no ideas or comments. Perhaps he was feeling foolish or thinking about the long day ahead of him, hunkered down in a gully, forbidden by his honor to complain. Xantcha tapped him on the shoulder.
"See that spot down there on the grass?"
She pointed at a dark splotch in the west. Ratepe nodded.